


Nor Gloom of Night

by meanoldauthor



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Gen, Horror, Suspense, related to another series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-21
Updated: 2019-06-21
Packaged: 2020-05-15 15:36:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19298659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meanoldauthor/pseuds/meanoldauthor
Summary: Home, rich resource, safe haven--Vaults are many things to the wasteland. But as often as not, they stand abandoned, monuments to a time gone by.A messenger for the Legion, Marius is forced to take shelter in an empty vault on his way through Colorado. And to his horror, it may not be as empty as it first seems...





	Nor Gloom of Night

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: This fic is an offshoot of, but not required reading for, the [Mean Old Lady](https://archiveofourown.org/series/271789) series. [Find a slightly younger, dumber Marius here!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5173934)

It was raining almost sideways as Marius staggered up the slope, fat pelting drops coming down from a greenish sky. There was a break in the mountainside above, a cave or at least a fold in the stone where he could wait the storm out. His boots crunched over the scree as he squinted at it, slowly coming clearer. It was either very deep indeed, or a darker stone at its back—or no, dark, rusted metal. A vault door.

He paused outside it, glancing along the rock face, hoping to see another option. As he hesitated, the wind shifted, colder, and hail started to rattle off the stones. Hiking his pack up and drawing his machete, he made the last few yards and crouched at the gap in the entrance, just wide enough to admit a man. Even with the grim weather outside, it took a moment for his eyes to adjust, peering into the dark. Nothing moved within, and he could hear no sound but the howling wind.

Marius was starting to shiver, and the storm showed no signs of slowing. He set his teeth—what was he, a Legionary, and afraid of the dark?—and pulled off his pack to squeeze through.

The wind still howled through the gap, but muffled, lost in the vast entrance of the vault. It seemed silent otherwise, and Marius knelt with his machete in reach. Working quickly, he pulled the torch off the side of his pack with one hand, opening up a fire bundle with the other, blowing gently on it until the tinder started to curl. The pitch mixture at the head of the torch caught, and he looked away from the light as he snuffed the bundle, happy to trade it for a weapon.

Rust, rust, and rust. The vault had been left unsealed for a long time then, with no one to tend it. The room, high-ceilinged and roughly square, was eerily empty, with no signs even of animals nesting in the corners. The only sign of life was decades old, a pair of skeletons curled up in the control room, the remains of a small camp set up between the consoles. The two of them looked to have laid down to die on the stained and rotten blankets, no signs of struggle; sickness or starvation had taken them, rather than violence. Cold comfort in that, and hardly a guarantee that no other threats had moved in since. But, rummaging through a crate of supplies, he figured he had shared camps with worse company.

There was a can of beans that wasn’t bulged or split—maybe not starvation, then, but it was moot to wonder now—and he rolled it back towards his pack as he continued to search. His skin crawled as he made for the hall leading deeper into the vault, ending in an elevator shaft with a few broken cables dangling from the ceiling. He fought back a feeling of vertigo as he peered down it, a bit of pitch dripping off the torch as he held it out. The drop extinguished itself before it hit bottom, but he got a glimpse of multiple levels below, the openings on the far side of the shaft gaping up like hungry mouths.

 _I hate having an imagination._ He turned back toward the entrance.

The entire vault shook, and he scrambled to put his back to the wall.

 _Thunder,_ he thought at first—it had that same booming, crackling edge to it. But it had reverberated up through the floor instead of from the entrance, sending the wall panels rattling. A generator trying to fire, then, on a lower level. A malfunction from the rain, this place was so decrepit it had probably a dozen leaks and channels to the surface.

Marius nodded to himself, trying to swallow his heart down out of his throat. Generator, one large enough to power a facility like this. He’d heard of it happening. After a long moment, he finally stepped away from the wall, but he couldn’t bring himself to turn away from the elevator shaft, torch starting to gutter out as he backed toward his pack.

The light from the gap in the door was paltry and yellow, the sun going down behind the clouds. Rain still sheeted down, cutting visibility to mere feet. He dragged his things off to one side, out of the light and wind, wavering over where to set up—was the corner safe, protected on all sides, or would he just be trapped if—

“It was a generator,” he said, but his voice was choked. Marius cleared his throat. “It was just the vault generator trying to fire,” he said more loudly, trying to ignore how lonely his voice sounded, echoing into the man-made cavern. “And I’m not a child, jumping at shadows. Where else am I going to shelter, anyway…”

He kept talking to himself as he took another pass through the camp, finding a small stove and canister of fuel that was still half-full. Glancing over at the skeletons, he gave them an awkward half-nod as he stepped away with it.

Lightning struck outside, throwing a sliver of the room into brilliant relief. He stared at the bodies a moment longer, listening to the thunder roll. For just that second, had something moved under the far one, and was the vibration he was feeling coming from—?

Marius made a disgusted noise at himself, stomping back to where he had left his things. He couldn’t help but keep his machete in hand, as he did.

—

He kept the stove burning low for the light it gave, turning over the packet of messages going north. Caesar was enroute to the Mojave yet, to oversee the encampment beside the Colorado River. It would be weeks at least before Lanius joined him, and clearly he and his other officers had things to discuss in the meantime. The packet was leather, with the bull sigil embossed on the back—though the oil treatment was starting to go rancid, and he wrinkled his nose at the smell where it had gotten damp—with a heavy wax seal holding the cords in place. The sort of thing that would show signs of tampering, should anyone be stupid enough to try. He grinned, humorless, as he heated a wide, flexible knife that would lift the wax without cracking it.

He didn’t handle the letters more than he needed to, laying them on a clean cloth to keep rust and dirt off, unfolding them just enough to pick the most interesting. He knew what the Temple was looking for these days, everything from troop movements to requisition orders to outright gossip, and he copied out three of them longhand, and made notes on a few of the others. Part of him still wondered at the use of it all, but the rest…

A gust of wind made the stove flicker, and he reflexively raised a hand to shield it. As he did, the bowl with the other half of his dinner—the entirety of his breakfast—clanked against the floor.

Marius stared at it, lowering his hand. The battered tin bowl was too far away for him to have knocked into it.

“The wind,” he said, but his mouth was dry; it was too heavy to blow around, and it had moved _after_ —

“It was just the wind,” he said, louder, and set the bowl next to him. The _bang!_ from the lower level—the generator, the generator, it was just a generator trying to fire—caught him off guard. His hands shook as he bundled the letters back up, and he stopped to clench them tight a moment. Breathing deep, he set about heating the thin knife again, sticking the seal back down without burning the leather or damaging the impression of the bull.

He tucked it back in his pack, and looked back at the entrance. It was full dark outside, and while the weather had largely calmed, he could still hear the wind, and there was a bite in the air. He had a scrap of tarp that he could use as shelter, but in the cold and wet, he might not last the night without freezing.

He muttered something dire about being trapped out in the cold, yet again. He packed another pitch-soaked wad of cloth into the cup on the end of the torch, leaving it unlit, and poked at the ember in the fire bundle thoughtfully. With a shrug, he set the tinder-filled cone of bark beside the torch before turning off the stove. He tried to get comfortable, sitting with his legs pulled up for warmth, machete in hand.

And kept an eye on the bowl.

Superstition was a poor trait in a Legionary, but he was a piss-poor Legionary anyway. Ghosts lurked in old-world places, they said. He remembered something so old and faint he couldn’t remember if he’d heard it from a priestess, or some other voice: _there’s eight hot hells, and we’re in the first of them, being reborn to suffer again and again, and we see the ghosts trying to move on to the next plane…_

Marius gripped the machete tighter, and waited for dawn to come.

—

_Clink. Clank. Scraaaape…_

He woke without opening his eyes. There was a wet noise, like someone walking through mud between the metallic sounds. It was still night, dark around him, and he moved slowly at first, a hand creeping to the fire bundle. In one motion, he blew it to life, caught the end of the torch with a _whumpf,_ and thrust it out as he surged to his feet with a yell.

His bowl rolled to a halt on the floor, rattling the whole way. He was alone.

Marius turned slowly, trying to light every corner of the room. There was nowhere for someone to have hidden, not so quickly; half of the vault entrance was mesh and grating, with no true cover. There were no footsteps on the floor, his own prints from earlier dried and starting to flake away. He went to the door anyway, holding the torch low to check for tracks.

He was knocked off his feet by the shaking, rust and dirt raining down from the ceiling, and the roar of earth shifting nearly deafened him. He lay with his arms over his head until it quieted, and bolted for his pack the second the vibration started to slow. The contents spilled across the floor as he picked it up, and he tried to sweep it all back in—through a tear in the side. He stared at the rip, digging through the pile.

The messages were gone.

The room had quieted, and he searched again. Gone, along with a bag of dried rations and a few other scraps. He stuffed everything back in, taped the pack roughly shut, and kept the torch high as he inched to the middle of the room, reaching for the bowl. There should have been a mess under it, flipped over on the floor, but there was nothing on the grating but rust, and the bowl was empty. He rubbed a thumb on the inside, finding it faintly damp, but otherwise clean.

“Alright,” he said, holding up the bowl. “Alright. You got something you wanted. I don’t know who or what you are, but I need those messages back—” his voice didn’t waver here, it really didn’t, “—and if you refuse to cooperate, I will take them by force.”

The silence seemed expectant, and the shifting light from the torch did unpleasant things to the shadows. When nothing seemed ready to leap out at him, Marius slung his pack and braced himself as he approached the control room. He leaned around the edge of the door slowly, then in a rush rounded it with the light and his machete raised.

The skeletons lay exactly where he’d left them, undisturbed, bones so carefully laid the hands were still intact. He almost looked over his shoulder to make sure no one had seen— _maybe they did, who’s in here with me, fuck fuck fuck_ —and turned to search the rest of the room more thoroughly.

He realized he was stalling when the torch started to die, dripping and smoking as the pitch burned away. He had two more plugs of fuel for it, and he gave the vault door a longing look. The night seemed calm enough, he had copies of the most important letters, he could fake a couple of the others…That would do, wouldn’t it? Anything missing would be too minor to notice, right?

But with no seal? All written in the same hand? What if he had missed something vital, some missive that had been expected by the officers in Colorado—worse, some report bound for Legate Lanius himself…

He shuddered, trying to keep his breathing steady, and lit the next fuel plug before tucking the last into his belt pouch. Whatever was in here might kill him, it might not. But Lanius _would_ make him wish he was dead, for as long as humanly possible.

Marius checked that his pack was settled, wiped a hand dry on his tunic, and headed for the elevator.

There was a ladder set into the side of the shaft, and Marius had to hold the torch between his teeth as he descended. He stopped at the next level down, leaning back with it to illuminate the entrance, praying for some sign of the packet. Even if whatever—or whoever, he couldn’t decide which was worse—had left it there for bait, there was a chance he could snatch it and run.

The ladder shivered under his hand as he hung there. The flame rippled with it, either a tremor in the air or his own grip. But there was nothing visible from the doorway, and he hesitated before moving on.

The next set of doors was closed, and the one below it opened on a pile of fallen stone. He could hear water trickling from the fourth, and it swallowed the light from the torch as it breathed out a smell of damp. And there, just in the edge of the light, was a flash of white on the floor. He couldn’t quite sigh with relief at the sight of it, but let out a breath through his teeth.

_How did it get down here?_

He stepped off into the doorway, another shudder rattling the vault. Freezing, he heard the sound of sloshing water grow louder, then fade. Marius didn’t take his eyes off the darkness as he stooped to pick up the paper. The rust here was worse, eating away the walls and leaving drifts of it over the floor, but it seemed dry enough now. He tucked the letter into his pack, and spotted another two down the hall ahead.

His instincts were screaming _trap, trap, trap,_ the hairs on his neck sticking up. He wasn’t alone. He wasn’t alone, and whatever was down here was leading him deeper into this pit.

If he ran, if he left everything here, all he had waiting was a horrible death by Legion hands for being a failure, or a traitor—either way. He could run, go back on his debts to the Temple, disappear into the wilds, even try and vanish into the West…

But no, it wasn’t just debts, to the Temple. He had a duty.

Marius took another step, lips pulling back in a terrified grin.

He snatched up the next two with shaking hands. The soft, wet noises preceded him down the hall, just out of sight, just in the next, deepest pool of darkness. The messages were scattered in ones and twos at random, leading him away from the main corridor. He made little effort to keep the papers intact, grabbing them and stuffing them more or less flat in his pack one-handed. After poking a hole in one with a finger, he forced himself to slow and take more care, almost holding his breath as he tried to make his heart beat slower. Rushing now would just make things more difficult later. If he got out of here alive…

The trail turned again, leading through a doorway. He could hear water sloshing gently within, and he led with the torch, checking the near corner of what looked like a commissary, where—

He slammed into the door frame as he leapt away, and doubled over, wheezing as he tried to get a hold of himself. Skeletons. Just a couple skeletons on the floor, older even than the ones near the entrance. They were so rotten with time that the rust had stained the bones, their surface almost powdery, only the faintest trace of vault-blue jumpsuits clinging to them. Marius shook his head at himself, eye catching on a bundle of white. The cords were still tangled around the last few messages, the spot of red wax glinting gently in the flickering torchlight.

The flame was starting to smoke, burning low. Marius reached for the pitched cloth in his belt pouch as he walked, eyes only on his goal. His foot came down with a _crack,_ and time seemed to slow as the bottom dropped out of his stomach. The edges of the broken floor panel raked at him as he fell, and his chin slammed into the metal, hands scrambling for purchase.

Ahead of him, the torch bounced once, the last of the pitch jarred out of the cup—and went out.

All he could hear was his own breath, his heart thundering in his ears. Marius swallowed hard, fingertips finding a seam in the metal. Beneath him, one of his boots knocked against a strut, and he tentatively rested his weight on it. It creaked, but held.

He couldn’t see anything but a glowworm glimmer from the backs of his eyes, struggling to make sense of true dark. Trying not to snag himself on the jagged edge of the panel, he managed to pull himself up halfway before he had to shift his grip.

And all around him, growing slowly louder, there was a soft, wet sound.

He thought at first it was the trickling water, from somewhere above, but it was too uneven, too diffuse. Marius froze, half-out of the hole in the floor, picking up a sucking, splattering noise, under the rattle of the walls.

The torch rolled away from his fingers as he got a knee on the edge, and he lunged for it. Gripping the hot metal of the end, he felt for his belt pouch with deliberate care, counting seconds as he breathed. If he panicked now, he was going to die.

The squelching, slithering noise was closer, louder, and coming from all sides.

_—going to die, I’m going to die, I’m—_

There was a thready whine as he reached for the fire bundle—his own breathing. He nearly dropped it as he untied it from his belt, and tried not to crush the ember. His hand shook as he unrolled the cone, and the light from it was so faint he thought he imagined it.

Faint, but just enough to pick out the glistening tendrils reaching for him.

Marius shut his eyes, forced himself to breathe, and blew the ember back to life.

Metal screeched as the torch caught, and he felt the flames lick at his face as he dove for the tangle of messages. He didn’t open his eyes until they were in his hand, and he only looked long enough to be sure he had the seal as well before turning to run.

The walls of the vault were buckling, distorting as he ran, and he caught glimpses of something moving behind the metal. He didn’t stop to watch, dust and dirt starting to patter out of the ceiling as he tried to count—he’d turned left here, two more doorways, then—

There was a rumble behind him, a crash as the vault structure gave way. Marius stuffed the letters down the front of his tunic and put his head down to run, nearly overshooting the elevator shaft. He all but threw himself up the ladder one-handed, not trusting the torch between his teeth at this speed. Something heaved behind the ladder, and he only had a second to twist and grab a lip on the wall, shielding his head as the metal fell past.

Looking up, there was a suggestion of light from the doorway ahead—the entrance, and dawn. He paused just long enough to throw the torch through it, freeing his hand to climb, scrabbling over panel edges and exposed conduit in the dark, the wet sound below him rallying.

Just as his hand landed on the floor above, something tugged on his boot.

Fear gave him one last burst of speed, and he shot into the hall like he’d been fired from a cannon, leaving the torch behind. Squeezing past the vault door nearly tore the pack from his back, but he didn’t slow down until he nearly fell down the hillside, staggering to a halt. Once he had his breath back, he turned to face the door, silent and unmoving in the gray, predawn light. As the terror faded, all the aches and scrapes from his mad dash made themselves known, and he touched what felt like a sunburn on his face, the blood under his chin.

He should have been relieved, but instead, anger moved to fill the void.

“What the _fuck_ was that?” he screamed up at the vault. Marius pulled the crumpled letters out of his shirt, waving them at the door. “I had to risk my _life_ for these, you piece of shit! For a fucking pile of—” he threw them down, feet nearly leaving the ground with the force of it, “— _paper,_ when I don’t even—oh, shit…”

He knelt to pick them up out of the mud, temper cooling as he wiped them off and tried to flatten them. The wax seal was intact but for a few nicks in the edge, and a scrap of soggy, oily leather still stuck to the back.

—

The frumentarius outside the Legate’s tent just raised his chin to Marius in greeting, taking the packet without a word. He just nodded back, and was two steps away before he heard, “They could at least use fresh leather for these things. You can barely see the embossing anymore.”

“Well, it made it all the way from Arizona.” Marius, who had spent a careful day weathering a section of mole rat hide, glanced back to shrug. “Things wear out fast on the rounds. Take it up with someone in charge.”

They shared a humorless look, knowing just how far the complaint would get. He nodded again, and tried not to wince at the snap of the seal finally breaking.


End file.
